"I'm sure you could have a word with God when you get to heaven. OK to go back to the motel now?"
The journey seemed to have satisfied Weird's desire for Alex's company. Once he had checked in at the motel, he announced he'd called a cab to take him into Seattle. "I have a colleague here I want to spend some time with." He'd arranged to meet Alex the following morning to drive to the funeral, and he seemed strangely subdued. Still, Alex dreaded what Weird would come out with at the funeral.
The Brahms died away and Paul walked up to the lectern. "We're all here because Ziggy meant something special to us," he said, clearly fighting to keep control of his voice. "If I spoke all day, I still couldn't convey half of what he meant to me. So I'm not even going to try. But if any of you have memories of Ziggy you'd like to share, I know we'd all like to hear them."
Almost before he'd stopped speaking, an elderly man stood up in the front row and walked stiffly to the podium. As he turned to face them, Alex realized the toll that burying a child took. Karel Malkiewicz seemed to have shrunk, his broad shoulders stooped and his dark eyes shrunk back into his skull. He hadn't seen Ziggy's widowed father for a couple of years, but the change was depressing. "I miss my son," he said, his Polish accent still audible beneath the Scots. "He made me proud all his life. Even as a child, he cared for other people. He was always ambitious, but not for personal glory. He wanted to be the best he could be, because that was how he could do his best for other people. Ziggy never cared much about what other people thought of him. He always said he would be judged by what he did, not by other people's opinions. I am glad to see so many of you here today, because that tells me that you all understood that about him." The old man took a sip of water from the glass on the lectern. "I loved my son. Maybe I didn't tell him that enough. But I hope he died knowing it." He bowed his head and returned to his seat.
Alex pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to hold his tears at bay. One after another, Ziggy's friends and colleagues came forward. Some said little more than how much they'd loved him and how much they would miss him. Others told anecdotes of their relationship, many of them warm and funny. Alex wanted to get up and say something, but he couldn't trust his voice not to betray him. Then the moment he had dreaded. He felt Weird shift in his seat and rise to his feet. Alex groaned inwardly.
Watching him stride to the podium, Alex wondered at the presence Weird had managed to acquire over the years. Ziggy had always been the one with charisma, Weird the awkward gangling one who could be relied on to say the wrong thing, make the wrong move, find the wrong note. But he'd learned his lesson well. A pin dropping would have sounded like the last trump as Weird composed himself to speak.
"Ziggy was my oldest friend," he intoned. "I thought the road he chose was misguided. He thought I was, to use a word for which there is no American-English equivalent, a pillock. Maybe even a charlatan. But that never mattered. The bond that existed between us was strong enough to survive that pressure. That's because the years we spent in each other's pockets were the hardest years in any man's life, the years when he grows from childhood to manhood. We all struggle through those years, trying to figure out who we are and what we have to offer the world. Some of us are lucky enough to have a friend like Ziggy to pick us up off the floor when we screw up."
Alex stared in disbelief. He couldn't quite believe his ears. He'd expected hellfire and damnation, and instead what he was hearing was unmistakably love. He found himself smiling, against all the odds.
"There were four of us," Weird continued. "The Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy. We met on our first day at high school and something magical happened. We bonded. We shared our deepest fears and our greatest triumphs. For years, we were the worst band in the world, and